On Oct 8th, with ~7 hours notice, I–along with much of Northern California–learned that electricity would be going out for possibly a week. It was a preventive power-outage to avoid catastrophic climate-related wildfires like the ones in the last few years.
This highlighted for me why, of the myriad things I procrastinate on, disaster prep was not a good one. (Especially because I also live directly on top of the Hayward faultline in Berkeley.)
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company site was down due to all the people frantically checking for info. (Hey PG&E, maybe investing in more bandwidth during emergencies would be a cost-effective move?)
From the spotty information (rumors?) I could get online I learned water could go out during this time as well.
Frantic trip to Home Depot for flashlights, batteries, candles, water jugs, first aid kits. Shopping carts full of non-perishables at El Cerrito Natural Grocery (oh God so Bay Area!)–prepping for Armageddon, gluten-free.
Filling car gas tank (could serve as a generator for devices.) Filling up bathtub and every container in the house with water. Making last-minute calls saying I may be out of touch (info online said cell towers would work, but ya never know.)
Seeing how much my life seemed like it could upend with the possibility of ~7 days without basic civilizational utilities, and the degree to which I was reduced to a nervous ninny, brought to mind a series I wrote a while ago but never published on topics related to the end of civilization as we know it. Now seems like a good time to share it!
Social Survivalism:
Cultivating High-Trust Networks Before Disaster Strikes
Part 1
This is a series about the social aspects of surviving a short- or long-term collapse of the normal functioning of civilization as we know it.
My basic premise is that, if such a collapse were to occur, the quantity and quality of relationships in your life–whom you know and trust–will be just as important as how much canned tuna, water, and first aid supplies, etc., you have.
This is written for people who believe that some sort of breakdown of the normal functioning of society is possible enough to invest at least a moderate amount of attention and money towards preparing for this contingency.
You don’t have to be the kind of person who is building bunkers or stockpiling armaments, etc. (which I am not) to benefit from the ideas I am sharing here. (Though what I’m saying is still relevant for the bunker-and-bullets people as well.)
While I don’t know when or where it will happen, or for what reason, I consider the possibility of a major breakdown in civilization as we know it within the next 5-20 years to be an “overdetermined” problem.
There are just so many ways it could happen, ways that seem far from out-of-the-question: a collapse of the US dollar as the global reserve currency; nuclear war; terrorism; oil shortages due to war or peak oil; climate-related drought, famine, “natural” disasters, and related mass social dislocation; cyber-terrorism that shut downs the global communications and physical infrastructure that civilization now depends upon; a second US civil war (or close to it), between red and blue America; and of course, some combination of many of these at once.
(Here’s an interesting one, you may not have heard of: my friend Michael Vassar, who studies these things closely, believes that solar energy and electric cars are on the verge of “tipping,” enough to cause around a 30% decrease in demand for oil within the next decade, which is enough to tip a cascading collapse in oil prices. This is, in essence, the opposite of peak oil, and while great for the climate change problem, it would also lead to a collapse of the Russian and some Middle-Eastern governments and societies, which are close to 100% dependent on oil revenues. This, he speculates, will lead to a refugee crisis far beyond anything the world has even seen. Not to mention a nuclear-armed Russia desperate for resources, and exponentially more violent chaos in the Middle East, possibly leading to nuclear conflagration with Israel.)
I am agnostic on which of these scenarios may or may not come to pass. Such speculations are “above my paygrade,” as I like to say.
What is not speculation is that preparing for the worst, in your lifetime, is at this point beyond prudent. And that, in doing so, paying attention to the social aspects of preparation–what I’m calling “social survivalism”–is just as important as preparing for the physical aspects.
I have never lived through a major breakdown of the social order. However, I grew up hearing the contents of my father’s book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” most nights around the dinner table. The idea of doomsday–a major short- or long-term collapse of basic civilizational means of survival–has never been far from my mind.
In addition–and in part because of this background–for the last eight years, I have been thinking and writing about wealth in a way different than most authors who write about wealth do. While I consider money to be relevant to wealth, of course, I do not consider it to be the most important part of wealth. I consider the high-trust relationships in your life–both personal and professional–to be the major constitutive component of wealth itself.
And also, it so happens that such high-trust relationships are your best shot at gaining the other–still relevant but not nearly as important–non-social components of wealth. (Virtually all my income, for example, comes through referrals from trusted business relationships.)
If faced with a choice, I would much rather have a vibrant and rich web of relationships with people I trust around me (which I do have) than a million dollars or billion dollars in the bank (which I do not have). For both happiness now and survival in the event of a short or prolonged disaster.
I’m sharing this series for three reasons:
–> They’re in my mind, and I want to get them out. I’m a writer at heart, and writers want to be read.
–> I believe they’ll be helpful to others, and I’d like to be helpful, no matter what I receive in return.
–> I believe helping others will help me form more and deeper trusting relationships–which of course is the very topic of the series.
With all that said, stay tuned for the next installment of this series, entitled, “3 Types of Value Exchange in Relationships: Giving, Reciprocal, and Taking.” It will help you take stock of the quality and trust of the web of relationships in your life.
Happy surviving!
–Michael
